Hey folks long time Volvo fan, just now looking to purchase my first one.

I currently own a 2005 Subaru Legacy GT with a blown turbo and motor, ouch! Looking for a good AWD sedan with the luxury aspect and good styling, and the s70 AWD turbo seems to be the perfect fit. I found one at a dealership about 5 hours from me, a 99 s70 awd, heated leather, sunroof, 120k, great overall condition. The dealer sells these cars as traded, but has great reviews on a bunch of "as traded" inexpensive cars he's sold in the past. There are no check engine lights on. I've done some reasearch on them and found that the main issue has to do with an Electronic throttle control system? Looks like it will cost about $1,000 to fix it (if cleaning doesn't work) but my main question is if there is a way to tell if its already been fixed in the past? Also, if the timing belt hasn't yet been changed, what kind of maintence expense am I looking at right off the bat? And since I'll be driving 5 hours to check it out before I know whether to buy it or not, what kind of things can I look for and ask the dealer on the phone before buying it? Seems to be a pretty good deal at $2,500 and is in great condition overall so I'm really close to buying this.

Any input would be much appreciated

Thanks

Evan

 

That price seems real low. How do you know the condition of the car? I have driven 5 hours to purchase a car a couple of times and both times I left empty handed. I was so disappointed with the car I made an offer and left. One car was $2,500 and I ended up offing $1,200, the other was a S70 T5 that was for sale for $4,500 and I ended up offering $1,800. Photos looked great, the talked good about the cars but they were really trashed.

I learned a lot about seeing clues in pictures and would NOT go more than 100 miles without have the car inspected by a car inspector. There is a company called Lemon Protectors and you can just about google Car Inspectors in that zip code and come up with a few.

Oh, not sure about the ETC but there are a lot of shops that can replace the timing belt for about $350. However, I would advise doing the the tensioner, rollers, and maybe even the serpentine belt while you're at it. Maybe about $550 to $600 total.

 

IMO, No, you shouldn't buy a '99 MY volvo; that was the first yr for the ETM.

And AWD on the volvos is also a problem area.

My $0.02

 

Sounds really cheap. I would think that would be more in the range of $4,500 in good condition.

 

I think if the throttle body was replaced in the past, it would have a yellow sticker on the bottom of it. Volvo had tons of problems with those going bad. They never fixed the issue, just replaced them under warranty, therefore they would still go bad eventually.

However, I recently replaced my throttle body with a rebuilt one from XeMODeX. They only cost $550 and they are simple to install by yourself. Here's the website: http://xemodex.com/